"Life grows out of longing": context and the subtext of Miloš N. Đurić's poems

Abstract

The text focuses on the miniature part of the oeuvre of Miloš Đurić: six poems he published in journals during 1917 and 1918. He was regarded primarily as a classic philologist, and his early works, a mixture of philosophy and literary criticism with the cultural and national engagement, attracted less attention and even in those rare cases the poetry was excluded. In the years of their appearance, Đurić was teaching in Sremska Mitrovica. The most relevant context, however, are Ðurić's studies in Zagreb until the year 1916. There Đurić got familiar with the ideas he introduced in his poems, made connections crucial for their publishing, and most notably, attended the philosophy classes by Albert Bazala.

The ideas within Đurić poetry cannot be separated from his studies that followed the poetic period, as those two genres are both stylistically and thematically interweaved. Tracing the ideas further in Duric's work provides insights on the sources of his poetic ideas. Two mains are the harmony of spheres i.e., musica universalis and čežnja (the longing). The first one in the poem „Šetnja" (The walk) relies on its classical-romantic reception: lyrical subject experiences the connection with the universe which inspires him to create. Thus, the self-reference to the poem occurs. Later in his study Filosofija panhumanizma (Philosophy of panhumanism, 1922) Đurić transforms this idea into the vision of social order in which the society develops harmoniously. The plausible sources that inspired him to apply this idea to the social context are found in the symbolic representation of the idea of "harmony of species" in L'évolution creatice (1907) of Henry Bergson and "Konzert der Völker" from Johann Gottfried Herder's Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (1793).

The Longing is the mystical idea in the core of Ðurić philosophy. It occurred for the first time in his poem "Čežnja" (The Longing) in 1917, and sticked with him the longest (1956). His studies Mit o sunčevoj sestri (The Myth of the Sun's Sister, 1925) and Philosophy of panhumanism reveals a multitude of sources to which Đurić connected this idea. The most relevant for his interpretation are Bergson's élan vital and Plato's ¿ps, while the name is the translation of German "Sehnsucht". That implies that not only mysticism but also the optimistic vitalism marked the beginnings of Ðurić's academic career. All six Ðurić poems are added in the attachment.